Stormy’s Lawsuit Just Became Real

This was implicit in my earlier post. But I wanted to make the point more explicit. Trump’s tweets this morning made Stormy Daniels’ defamation lawsuit dramatically more viable.

Stormy Daniels is a public figure. She was a public figure all the way back to 2006 when the affair happened and before that. She was certainly a public figure when President Trump made his allegedly defamatory statements. But the earlier statements were general and rather vague – trash talk, if you will. Trump has considerable latitude for trash talk about a public figure. Indeed, one lawyer reader pointed out to me that Daniels’ suit was enough of a stretch that she even had some vulnerability to a successful SLAPP motion. That basically means a counter-claim that it’s a frivolous lawsuit and Daniels’ owes Trump compensation to cover his legal fees.